Autódromo José Carlos Pace… Interlagos…
When drivers hear this name they know that not only is the season coming to a close, but that they are about to drive out of the garage onto one of the most prestigious circuits on not only the GPVWC Superleague calendar but the Formula One calendar as well.

Named after Brazilian F1 driver, Carlos Pace. The 4.309 kilometres (2.677 miles) boasts some of the best action the fans will get to see throughout the season. Much like the Circuit of the Americas before, we are greeted by a mix of sweeping corners and tight, technical and tyre destroying sections mainly inside the second sector.

Whilst the Suzuka circuit boasts being the home of title winning races for the greatest drivers. Interlagos boasts being the home of, in most people’s eyes, the single greatest Formula One driver of all time.

Welcome to the Eyes Forward for the penultimate round of the 2018 Grand Prix Virtual World Championship Superleague season. One in which, once again, could mean the title is wrapped up a round early by Alex Siebel.

A Quick Round Up:Last time out at the Cirtuit of the Americas we witnessed exhilaration and heartbreak alongside an Edge Esports first.
Qualifying 1st and 2nd on the grid locking out the front row for the first time in the team’s history after two outstanding laps put Brljak on the pole with Teien alongside.

An amazing qualifying was then followed by an amazing show of pace in the early phase of the race with Brljak slowly pulling away from Teien of whom was acting rear gunner for the Croatian fending off title leader Alex Siebel.
Throughout the rest of the race is was Brljak’s day. No drop in pace and a fresh engine allowing him to max his potential and keep the gap to Siebel and take the victory by a dominant 13.6 seconds.
For Teien however. The luck just was not there for the Norwegian. Coming into the race with a dying power unit his pace was already off what Siebel and Brljak could do on race pace but to add insult to injury only ten laps from the chequered flag his engine gave out into Turn 16 and ended the team’s hopes of scoring a double podium and closing the gap in the constructors to ACR Zakspeed of whom finished P2 and P7 after a shocking race for Kappet.

The title fight – The Drivers Title:
After Brljak’s, dominant, victory at the US Grand Prix it means that the gap between himself and Siebel drops by another 5 points coming into the penultimate round. What this means is that the title implications change although they are extremely less in favor of the Edge driver.

If Siebel finishes ahead of Brljak it is game over in the title fight. So for Brljak to remain inside the title fight:

Brljak has his work cut out for him if he wants to win this year’s title but he is more than capable of finishing ahead of Siebel. For this round luck will need to be fully on his side if he wants to have a shot going into the final round at Abu Dhabi.

The title fight – The Constructors Title:
In the constructors standings things just got harder. After Teien’s retirement with ten laps to go it meant that ACR Zakspeed claimed four points over the Edge Esports squad coming into Brazil. To remain in the Constructors Title fight, Teien and Brljak will need to amass a total of three points over the ACR Zakspeed squad on Thursday to be within the 45 points limit coming into Abu Dhabi. So not only is the pressure on in the Drivers Championship but it is very much on in the Constructors Championship.

As we look ahead to Thursday and the 71 laps and 305.939 Kilometres (190.076 Miles) that confront the grid of 14 teams and 28 cars, we can be certain that the 2018 GPVWC Superleague Brazilian Grand Prix will be one for the history books. 18 years and 16 different winners alongside a certainty of a new winner at this racetrack gives us some incredible racing to look forward to. Will you be there to watch history?

Join us on Thursday the 25th of October on the GPVWC YouTube channel LIVE at 20:30 CEST for what will be another unmissable event!

With the GPVWC Superleague United States Grand Prix being only hours away. We take a look at what lies ahead for the dynamic duo of Jarl Teien and Petar Brljak this time around.

TheBasics
The Circuit of the Americas is one of the newer additions to the Superleague calendar, having only made its debut in the 2014 season and seeing three seperate winners over the four races the track has held in GPVWC’s top tier series (Alex Cooper 2014 + 2015 , Florian Geier 2016, Rudy van Buren 2017).

The 5.513 km (3.426 mi) anti-clockwise circuit lays inside the heart of Texas and features a mix of tight, traction vital corners alongside sets of flowing sweepers that put the aerodynamic and mechanical grip through its paces. With the circuit being one to push engines to breaking point, you can expect to see teams bringing fresher engines to this round of the championship to avoid the risk of an engine failure midway through the event.

The Championship
Coming into tonight’s round of the 2018 campaign we saw a shake up of the Drivers Championship after Petar Brljak took the victory alongside Alex Siebel recieving a 20 second post-race time penalty after finishing second place of which dropped him down to sixth after the results became official. So what does this mean for us here at Edge Esports? Below is the current championship and the implications as we head into the final three rounds of the year.

As much as the title fight will go onto the final two rounds of the championship. Brljak, of whom has jumped both Teien and Kappet to now be sat second in the championship, has his work cut out if he wants to have any realistic shot of winning this year’s title with Siebel being very much in the drivers seat.

In the Constructors Championship it very much is all to play for.

ACR Zakspeed – 437 PointsEdge Esports – 393 Points (-44)

With the gap only being 44 points and the maximum points haul being 135 points the title fight, so long as each team consistently finishes at the top, will go to Abu Dhabi. This we will cover in a later Eyes Forward.

Championship Implications – The Drivers
With there being only three rounds left of the 2018 season, the maximum points haul is now lowered to 75. This would mean that the requirements for Siebel to take the title at this round are as follows:

With 56 laps of racing ahead of us there is an extremely large cloud of tension in the air as the teams and drivers make their final preparations.
Join us tonight for what could be the deciding race in the championship LIVE on the GPVWC Youtube channel from 8:30pm CEST.

FSR World Champion Mo Patel will make his Superleague debut next Thursday in the Singapore Grand Prix. The Britton, who already had previous experiences with the team in ITC and as Superleague race engineer will partner Petar Brljak for this race, replacing Jarl Teien who can’t race due to a trip to the ADAC simracing expo at hockenheim.

Teamboss Andreas Wauters is happy to substitute quality with quality:“Ofcourse it’s always difficult when one of your drivers can’t attend a race, especially during the crucial championship fight we are currently having with ACR. However i’m convinced that if anyone on this planet is the right man to jump in as a replacement driver at Singapore, it’s Mo! I know he has the speed, the consistency and the racecraft to score good points to continue our titlehunt on ACR.”

Patel is looking forward to the race:“After getting over the excitement for my debut race in Superleague, I know I have quite a lot of hard work to do. It’s a great opportunity to race for Edge, but it will be a tough task replacing Jarl, who’s done an excellent job this season. It’s probably the toughest track to get used to a new car, especially when qualifying will be so key. Nonetheless, typically Petar and I have good fortunes under the lights, hopefully we maintain this to get good points for the team!”

“FSR is an opportunity to offer our fans different avenues of excitement”

Edge Esports have been confirmed as participants in the 2018 Formula SimRacing World Championship with Jim Parisis and Giorgos ‘George’ Manousakis taking the primary seats. The team has taken this exciting opportunity to join one of the most well known and respected simracing leagues to extend our growth into wider markets. George and Jim will be supported by race engineer and old friend Bill Tzortzis, while Technical Director Daniel Cziranku will take the lead in coaching, setup development and strategy.

Andreas Wauters, Edge Esports Owner

“FSR is one of the biggest leagues out there. It’s an amazing opportunity for us to extend our operations to something new and offer our fans different avenues of excitement. Although we are entering the unknown, our target is to get up to speed fast and efficiently.”

Jim Parisis – #12

“I wanted to join Edge because of two primary factors; professionalism and dedication. I have only spent 2-3 weeks with the team but yet they seem to have everything a simracer would ever want to go to the next level of simracing.

“I remember back in the days of F1 2002 on PC playing with a controller. That, I assume, was the first game someone could call “a sim”. Before that I owned all the F1 titles on the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. I’ve taken some titles here and there in both national and international leagues but the best is yet to come as the simracing scene grows. I want to be there.

“The man to beat in every championship is the current champion, in this case, it is Muhammed Patel.”

Giorgos Manousakis – #93

“Joining the team I felt comfortable from the very first minute and that is very important to me. The way they think about the future and the very high goals the team have? That convinced me to join.

“I started with PlayStation 1 gaming many, many years ago with games like Gran Turismo but the first cexperience I had with simracing was in 2009 with rFactor. The achievement I’m most proud of, so far, is when I won a national championship against Jim.

“I think that it is too soon to label a competitor the strongest because I believe a lot of drivers are ‘sandbagging’. From what I can see so far, the man in form is Jernej Simoncic. Of course the champion Muhammed Patel should also NOT be underestimated.”

Bill Tzortis, Edge FSR Race Engineer

“Open communication and trying to improve every little detail is the best that we can do whether this be our first or fiftieth season. In real life, always working makes you stronger and faster. I think that this mentality applies to simracing also.

“I think the teams in the championship are strong. According to the test races so far Musto and ACR are top tier teams but I feel that we are not so far behind. Work, practice and some good luck are the keys for us to be high in the championship and to make their lives difficult.”

Daniel Cziranku, Edge Esports Technical Director

“FSR is one of the strongest leagues out there. Of course you can expect top performance from high profile teams like ACR Zakspeed but we have to be wary of the rest of the pack. We try to examine the car to the very last screw and bolt; using the preseason events as a testing ground for our experiments.

“Both of our drivers are hard working professionals who can always provide accurate and detailed feedback on the changes we make. This makes things much easier for Bill and myself. Their driving skills alone will surely mean problems to our competitors and we are hopeful we can provide the perfect chassis to allow them to extract every tenth of a second from the challenges we are about to face.”

The FSR squad will enter competitive action for the first time in Melbourne on March 25th.

That was pretty good! Petar Brljak with yet another masterclass drive to salvage 3rd, going on a 2 stop strategy after a collision early in the race with Daniel Kiss putting in a very strong race as well to get both Edge cars into the top 5! 😎